Tuesday 17th March 2020
Walking the Tightrope: Mind and Body in Adolescence – Nina Tebartz
Working with adolescents as a therapist is hugely rewarding and challenging in equal measure – always walking the fine line between being ‘allowed in’ as a helpful figure, and the sheer and often bleak sense of being kept out and utterly useless. Teenagers communicate their difficulties in different ways, often involving the body. In their attempt to manoeuvre the challenges of adolescence, the threat and real risk of the young person harming the body is never far away. Inevitably, the therapist has to find ways to tolerate and manage high anxiety levels as part of the adolescent’s therapy. Drawing on a number of case vignettes, Nina Tebartz will explore the adolescent trajectory, in particular unconscious processes and the way the adolescent body can be used to convey, and defend against, internal conflict and developmental challenges. Nina Tebartz is a psychodynamic psychotherapist for children, adolescents and adults. Until recently she was a lecturer on the MSc Psychodynamic Counselling and Psychotherapy with Children and Adolescents at Birkbeck, and now works as a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in secondary schools alongside running a private practice for children, adolescents and adults.
